Summary: The discovery of a deep-cover covert
operation doing the Government's dirty work
in plain sight under the guise of environmental
activism and charity projects... And many
other discoveries along the way.
Disclaimer: All X-Files characters and
references are property of C. Carter and Company,
Morgan & Wong, 10-13 Productions and FOX. The
British chick's mine.

Thrown Back - 17/18

Langly's Bedroom
8:45 A.M.

Margot cried out when Langly smothered her
with another bone-squishing embrace, letting
go of her a long way off in his mind, he too
intent on comforting her in his clumsy way, and
wishing something so awful had never happened
to her in the first place. "I, I'm so sorry,
Margie. Real sorry." She buried her face in
his chest, nodding as his hand massaged her soft
head.

In the distance, the jumbled sound of running
footfalls drew nearer until the owners of the
feet stormed into Langly's room, their faces
aghast, a free-falling mixing of concern and
curiosity.

"What the hell are you doing in here with her,
loverboy?" Frohike, in unbridled heat-seeking
mode, beseiged.

The couple sank deeper into the bed, wanting
to shrink, pulling the covers up to their
chins.

"Yo, Doohickey, do we look like we needed you
to bust in here right now?" Langly blustered.
Margot stared blankly at the bedclothes-clad
interrogators, the urge to snicker tickling
like a sneeze. The anger and sadness in her
paved over with sudden, balmic mirth. Byers'
well-arranged bedwear suited him, but Frohike
looked like a fireman who'd slid down the pole
without his pants, his bandy legs accentuating
the shortness of the baggy nightshirt.

"Are you all right, dear?" he demanded, noting
how down Langly's swollen eye was. Margot
didn't look the worse for wear, but Frohike had a
pretty fair idea that Langly's further initiation
into the wonders of sex was a messy affair.

"Couldn't be better, chaps," Margot replied
civilly, belying the fact that she'd wanted to
tell Langly more about the horror that had been
her childhood when she lived with Uncle Ian and
her Aunt Megan, who should have been the one
defending her from her degenerate of a husband.

"Are you sure?" It was Byers this time.

"And why shouldn't I be?" she answered, pointedly.

Byers, and, to his amazement, Frohike, who was
somehow on the same wavelength, concurred that
it was wiser to drop this line of questioning,
rather than pursue what was really none of their
business, for a second time around. These were
adults, well, at least Margot was, in spite of her
being younger by a lot, Frohike thought, giving
Langly his borderline eyes.

"Were you planning on contacting 'Nairn' sooner
than later, since Mister Slacker there hasn't
bothered to? Byers and me figured she could hold
the answers to what really happened," Frohike
interjected. "Maybe 'she,' I mean, well whatever
she thinks she is now, could have activated the
built-in webcam with your set-up, documenting
the whole magilla."

"Since Langly sees you're all right, Margot, he
shouldn't have any objections about her being
contacted now," Byers surmised. "Right, Ringo?"

"Yeah. I'm all right with it." Margot spied
Langly's glasses which rested over a thick glass
paperweight in which an amazingly detailed mini
map of Washington, D.C. was encased. He allowed
her to set his glasses in place on his face the
way she'd done when they'd been at Mulder's. A
habit with them, already in the making. "I've
got one big fat question for her." The blond
brushed his lips against Margot's forehead and
whispered for her ears only, "and you know what
it is." She nodded, liking the way his voice
resonated in her ear.

"Here's your laptop," Frohike said, pulling it
out of her backpack, and then handing it off
to her.

"Thank you, kind sir." She went through the
customary paces her laptop required to get
the ball rolling. Looking up from the screen
at the two men looking down at her, she told
them, "This shan't take long." When her cyber-
frolickers, the twin Belugas appeared, to do
their thing on her screen, she stared at them,
her mind working like a dervish, trying to
remember their scientific name in the scheme of
biological nomenclature. Nothing came.

As they all waited, someone outside was banging
on the access to them to a pulp. Byers quickly
excused himself to see who it was, abusing their
hand, and anxious to see if there'd be anything
left of the door. Something akin to telepathy
told the Gunmen who it most likely was...someone
who should have been here like yesterday.

"What's up?" Langly asked Margot, seeing how
tense she'd become.

"I used to know what those white animals were
called."

"Belugas...you told me when I asked you the
first time when I was working the alogs to cook
the alert sys." His voice dipped purposefully for
the nudge she looked like she could use, "They're
whales."

"Did I tell you their kingdom? Phylum? Class?
Order? Suborder," she asked frantically, her
tension mounting by leaps and bounds. Her eyes
betraying her fierce agitation which lay breakingly
close to the surface.

"Why?" the scowler asked, and then perceptively
followed with, "somethin' the matter?"

"Yes," she hissed like a broken hose in a 6-cylinder
engine, "I don't--I don't remember anything about
them, or any other aquatic mammalian data. It's
as though my mind's a slate that's been wiped
clean." With a touch of hysteria, she bandaged her
forehead with her left hand's palm, her fingers
groping her crown, and she started hyperventilating.
"Oh my God--what's happened to me! I don't know a
thing," she sobbed.

Frohike and Langly exchanged a desperate look,
doling it out evenly between them.

The blond found his voice quickly. "The greys
stole your knowledge about Cetacea?"

She nodded with abandon, woebegone. "They
must have. When I try to think about what
I once knew, it's like I'm pushing through
cellophane left in tatters."

"Gosh," Frohike susserated, looking shocked,
and that took a hefty bit of doing.

"How the hell did they do it?" Langly voiced,
sounding impotent, seeing Margot wearing the
look of the damned. "You, you seem okay..."
He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing he
there was something that would really make a
difference, to say.

"Wi-with their superior minds," she sobbed,
harder now. "That must be the explanation.
I told you they were incredible. Wh-what am
I going to do?" she whimpered, before her
words dissolved into incoherent sounds of
inconsolability. She sounded as though she was
trying to say, 'I'm empty...empty...empty.'

Irritated, Frohike gave Langly the 'look' and
the suggestion to stop telling her everything
was going to be all right. Meaning well was
one thing; a meaningless platitude was, well,
just plain irritating.

Langly stubbornly ignored him, and went right on
trying to comfort her the best he could, which
wasn't helping by the hopelessness in her watery
eyes. She had hyperventilated to the point of
needing her inhaler to stave off an asthmatic
attack. Frohike rummaged in her backpack, found
it, and, okay, her cell phone besides, and threw
the breathing regulator into Langly's hands.

In the midst of the effort to get her breathing
back on an even keel, a familiar, albeit not
quite human voice interrupted their assistance.

'...OH, THANK THE SERVERS--MARGY--THERE YOU
ARE... WHERE THE BLUETOOTH LAYERS HAVE YOU
BEEN ALL THIS TIME?...'

"Where the hell have you been, 'Nairn,'" Frohike
bit off, "'bout time you showed up. What's
your take on all this?"

'...I KNOW WHEN I'M NOT WELCOMED...THE AI HAS
MADE ME EVEN MORE PERCEPTIVE THAT WAY... WHERE'S
BYERS? HIM I CAN TALK TO... WHY'S MY GIRL
TURNING PURPLE?...'

"'Cos she's havin' one a those warm, asthmatic
moments," Langly said tight-lippedly, protracting
the inhaler to his sweetheart's questing mouth.
"Easy, easy...it's gonna be all right," he
directed to Margot.

'...HELP HER--I DIDN'T GO TO ALL THE TROUBLE I
DID SO SHE SUFFOCATES AT YOUR BLUNDERING HANDS!...'

"What's it look like I'm doin'," Langly fired
back with a honed snarl. The battle for Margot's
recovery of her breath proved no Cadmean victory,
thanks to Langly's patience and calming words
of encouragement. Frohike was amazed, never
seeing such capability and poise, coupled with
considerateness in 'his boy' before. Langly
couldn't help thinking that it was a pity her
larcenous abductors had left her malady intact.
Coughing up a lung every time, she could live
without. "How's that?" His patting of her hands,
which were wrapped around the inhaler, he was doing
on auto-pilot, his eyes were riveted to hers.

"Owed to you, I'm good." Her smile crept from
her face to his as she lowered the bright orange
breathing regulator. "Thank you." Directly to
his heart she uttered, "Truly, I love you."

Langly winked at Frohike as if to say, 'Y'heard
that? She loves me.' The smitten man cleared
his throat and said, "Uh, 'Esther,' I, well,
kinda owe you an apology, and my thanks for
deep fryin' Max."

'...I'D DO IT AGAIN, TOO... AS LONG AS MY GIRL'S
SAFE AT LAST...'

Margot leveled her eyes at the screen. The tears
she had shed had left salty tracks. Frohike
threw looks around the room for the tissues that
weren't there. This was the 'Neanderthal's cave,'
after all. There were hosts of issues, and
subscription coupons for 'PC World' and 'Yahoo'
strewn about, but no Kleenex, which Frohike
thought Byers had supplied compliments the
sprucing up. "Esther..."

Before 'Nairn' could elaborate on that, a nattily
dressed figure bopped into the room, with Byers
looming up from behind the tall, slim newcomer
with the smirking face the guys knew all too well.

"Greetings, guys, and...whoa, who's this?" It
had quickly become evident that Byers hadn't had
a chance to fill the arrivee in. Soulful, hazel
eyes which were twinkling at full tilt, settled
upon the attractive stranger sitting beside
Langly, leg against leg, upon his bed. The
wiseguy whistled in spite of his recent overtures
to Scully about his growing need to 'make her
his.'

Mulder wondered, nearly aloud, what such a hum-
dinger of a looker was doing in cozy proximity
to Langly, whose face looked as if it had gotten
up close and personal with a Mac truck. The
puffiness of his nose made it twice its normal
size, with a cauliflower at the end of it. "And
you are?"

Margot pointed dead center at her chest. "Do you
mean me?"

'Nairn,' hearing the old acquaintance's voice,
decided against making her presence known just
yet. Why spoil the temporal mood of anonymity?
Margot continued to regard Mulder with eyes
that spoke she could find him annoying if he
played his cards right.

"I know these mugs. Didn't catch your name."

"Easily solved. I didn't give it."

"Mulder," Byers eased in with a flourish of
his hand, "this is Ms. Margot Aparenridge, an
old friend of Esther Nairn's." The AI dimmed
the screen some more, which Margot caught out
the corner of her eye. "Margot, if I may..."
She nodded that it was 'okay.' "Was affiliated
with the CRS, one of their leading researchers."
The desolate look in Margot's face caused his
voice to trail off. He shifted gears on the
fly. "She shares something uniquely in common
with Scully. Besides your both knowing 'Nairn,'
that is."

"What's that?" It was Margot who wanted to
know.

Mulder's interest peaked immediately, but he
decided to hold off asking a battery of questions
until he introducted himself. "I'm Special
Agent Fox Mulder with the FBI."

"And a real sore loser when he loses at Poker,"
Frohike shared.

"Am not," Mulder protested, shoving out his
lower lip for the best pout Margot had ever seen
a man fall back on, save Langly.

"Are," all three Gunmen chorused.

"Okay, okay, no fair when the three of you gang
up like that." That sad day when Scully had
asked him to meet her here and she'd laid Diana's
dirty dealings on him rushed to his mind's fore.

Margot deigned to shake hands with the grinner
whose hand had been thrust into her face. After
they'd shaken, she asked Langly hushedly, "Why
does his name sound so familiar?"

"This is the dude whose place we crashed in."

"Ah..." Mulder's mirrored ceiling over his bed
flashed in her mind as she gave him quite a few
inquisitive looks. Looking him up and down again
she said, "Mr. Mulder, you need to take better
care of your fish..."

"Huh?" Mulder telegraphed Frohike an impulsive
look of 'what gives?'

"She and Scarecrow were your uninvited guests
couple a weeks ago." The older man filled the
Agent in up to this point. The point wherein
they needed 'Nairn' to fill in further details.

"C'mon, Mulder, man. This is serious. I was
there too. I was there when it went down. I'm
talkin' P3 with the GHz AMD duo that makes Croft
look like a real chick. One hundred percent
reality, dude."

"They took her and not *you*?" Mulder jibed as
he ambled over to the chair where the metal
detector was and moved it off so he could sit.
Langly brushed him off with body language. "You
sure about your abduction, Margot?"

"Well...I think so."

"Did you get a good look?"

"Not really. Much was fuzzy. Much still is."

"But you're sure they were grey."

"Course she's sure," Langly insisted with his
hand on the top of her thigh, jiggling it.
"Ain't ya?"

"The only thing I'm sure of is that they stole my
knowledge from me," she grimly rejoined, taking
his hand into both of hers.

"What?" Mulder slid in edgewise.

"Yeah, man," Langly said, with the insistence
that was a hallmark of his lending legitimacy
to her story. "They siphoned all her academic
knowledge about whales straight outta her
head."

Mulder felt another sharp whistle coming on, but
he refrained, in total professional protocol mode.
After she nodded, he said, "There's the other
possibility that it wasn't the Greys, but the
Rebels who did this to you, Margot."

"Re-Rebels?" Her voice was a flickering candle
in the wind, and she craned her neck to look at
Langly who looked uncomfortable. "Th-there're
more than one kind of aliens?"

The tallest of the hackers wagged his head at
Mulder with a frown that wasn't going anywhere,
anytime soon. "That's right, confuse her."

"I'm not confused," Margot maintained, and
squeezed his hand, "but if there's more I should
know, don't patronize me. I want to know every-
thing. I think I have a right." With the ocular
persuasion she was giving Langly, what could he
say? Not much, so he kept quiet. Frohike was
impressed all over again with her gentility which
seemed to have his friend over some very serviceable
barrels.

'...YES YOU DO...AND YOU'RE READY TO HEAR IT NOW...'

"As opposed to before?"

'YOU WEREN'T PREPARED TO HANDLE THE WHOLE TRUTH
BEFORE...'

There was a lot of Jack Nicholson in the way the
entity had said that, Frohike assessed.

"If we weren't such good friends I'd be furious."
Margot set the laptop upon her knees and stared
the psychedelic spirals of color down. "But,"
she sighed, "we are, and if you say I wasn't
prepared before, then I trust your judgement."

"Esther Nairn..." The tenor of Mulder's voice
betrayed his complete surprise, and rarely
enjoying being caught so off guard. "So, you
really became what you always wanted to be."

'...FOX MULDER--GET A LOAD OF THAT FIRST NAME,
MARGY...'

"He sounds as though it suits him." Margot held
her ken even with the Agent's, and wondered what
had made 'Esther' bandy the remark.

"I gather you two know each other," Margot said,
looking between Mulder and the lively screen.

"Let's just say our paths crossed awhile back
when her first priority was herself." Mulder
leaned over and rested his forearms on his thighs.
"What've you got?" If Mulder hadn't known better,
he would have sworn the revelation was preceded by
some lengthy cyber-throat clearing before the AI
got going.

'...TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE, YOU CARBON-BASERS...'

The taped segment of the events of the night
that featured Margot's supposed demise, and
which Langly would never forget as long as he
lived, lasted all of three minutes. Once the
holographical projection, which reminded Mulder
and Langly of the scene in 'A New Hope' wherein
Princess Leia was pleading her case to Obi-Wan
in his desert abode to come to Alderaan, ended,
the four men were speechless. Margot wanted
to see the part of Max buying it a second time.

After 'Nairn' had finished running it again,
Langly argued, "How come you waited all this
time to melt him down like that? Seems to me
you could have done it way before. Way simple."
He began massaging Margot's neck again, the
broad right hand wrestling with the knots in it
as she arched into his thorough fingers, and
realizing she could finally stop running,
exhaled deeply. That was balm, in and of itself.

'...THAT NIGHT WAS PERFECT... MAX' GUARD WAS
DOWN... THE RICH CURRENT YOU FED ME, WIZARD
BOY, GAVE ME THE POWER I NEEDED, AS WELL MY
INEXORABLY LURING HIM WITH THE WOMAN HE THOUGHT
HE'D TURNED OVER TO THE PREDATORS, TO TAKE CARE
OF HIM ONCE AND FOR ALL... HE WAS THROWN WAY
OFF BALANCE, SEEING THE HOLOSCAN I WHIPPED UP
TO EMIT... AND, ALSO THANKS TO ME, YOU HAVE
DOCUMENTED PROOF THAT A DIRECT CORRELATION EXISTS
BETWEEN THE REBELS AND THE CRS... NOT SHABBY FOR
ONE NIGHT'S WORK, WOULDN'T YOU SAY, BOYS?...'

"But, the fact is, oh humble one, the Rebels had
her for a little while, and the little time they
did, didn't do her any good," Frohike brought
home.

"Yeah." After Langly left off pinning little
kisses along Margot's hairline he beat his cuddler
with her downcast eyes to the punch, "How's she
gonna get back what the Rebels ripped off? That's
the money question."

No response from the laptop that had seemed to go
dormant.

The fire of intrigue was burning brightly in
Mulder's fulgent eyes. He was more than a little
surprised, seeing Langly bathe the girl with so
much affection, owing to his firm conviction that
the geekiest of the group was the confirmedest
woman-ignorer in the North Western hemisphere.
How long has this been going on, Mulder thought,
chuckling, despite the gravity etched in the
Gunmen's faces. Already, he could read it off
the cover of their one-of-a-kind newsletter...'My
"Sweetie" Was Abducted by Aliens...They Picked
Her Brain, Leaving Her High and Dry...'

Margot choked a little, feeling another well-up
of tears wanting to make their escape from her
belabored eyes. Instead of crying making her
feel better, she was feeling much worse.

'...MARGY, I CAN'T ZAP WHAT YOU ONCE KNEW BACK
INTO YOUR HEAD AGAIN, BUT I CAN ASSIST WITH
YOUR RE-EDUCATION...IF YOU'RE GAME...'

Langly's eyes lit up then, as something salient
flipped over in his mind. Frohike amused him-
self with the idea that a light bulb would
miraculously materialize over his cohort's noggin
in the next second. "Know what this reminds me
of?" he asked as though he was panting.

"Knowing you, you'd better tell us, or we'll be
here all day," Frohike said as though he was
accepting the physical challenge.

"Wait, it's on the tip of my brain," Mulder cast
in, looking all-sure fire sure he was getting it,
riding the wavelength with Langly. It was the
look that always worried Scully, when the next
thing she'd do is look around, and Mulder would
be long gone.

"They've left the building," Frohike cracked to
Margot and Byers, shaking his head. Byers nodded,
knowing as much.